The present invention relates to managing a refrigeration system and, more particularly, to monitoring and evaluating food inventory and equipment of a food retailer.
Produced food travels from processing plants to retailers, where the food product remains on display case shelves for extended periods of time. In general, the display case shelves are part of a refrigeration system for storing the food product. In the interest of efficiency, retailers attempt to maximize the shelf-life of the stored food product while maintaining awareness of food product quality and safety issues.
For improved food quality and safety, the food product should not exceed critical temperature limits while being displayed in the grocery store display cases. For uncooked food products, the product temperature should not exceed forty-one (41) degrees Fahrenheit. Above this critical temperature limit, bacteria grow at a faster rate. In order to maximize the shelf life and safety of the food product, retailers must carefully monitor the food product stored therein. In general, monitoring of the temperature of the food product enables determination of the bacterial growth rates of the food product. To achieve this, refrigeration systems of retailers typically include temperature sensors within the individual refrigeration units. These temperature sensors feed the temperature information to a refrigeration system controller. Monitoring of the food product involves information gathering and analysis.
The refrigeration system plays a key role in controlling the quality and safety of the food product. Thus, any breakdown in the refrigeration system or variation in performance of the refrigeration system can cause food quality and safety issues. Thus, it is important for the retailer to monitor and maintain the equipment of the refrigeration system to ensure its operation at expected levels.
Further, refrigeration systems generally require a significant amount of energy to operate. The energy requirements are thus a significant cost to food product retailers, especially when compounding the energy uses across multiple retail locations. As a result, it is in the best interest of food retailers to closely monitor the performance of the refrigeration systems to maximize their efficiency, thereby reducing operational costs.
Monitoring food product quality and safety, as well as refrigeration system performance, maintenance and energy consumption are tedious and time-consuming operations and are undesirable for retailers to perform independently. Generally speaking, retailers lack the expertise to accurately analyze time and temperature data and relate that data to food product quality and safety, as well as the expertise to monitor the refrigeration system for performance, maintenance and efficiency. Further, a typical food retailer includes a plurality of retail locations spanning a large area. Monitoring each of the retail locations on an individual basis is inefficient and often results in redundancies.
Therefore, it is desirable in the industry to provide a method for monitoring the food product of a plurality of remote retailers. The method should allow a user to accurately determine the quality and safety of the food product as a function of the temperature history and length of time stored. Further, the method should provide an alarming routine for signaling when the food product has crossed particular quality and safety limits. The method should also monitor the refrigeration systems of the remote retailers for performance, maintenance and efficiency. The method should monitor multiple locations for performance comparison purposes, to avoid redundancies between remote locations and to provide the expertise required to accurately analyze characteristics of individual remote locations.
Accordingly, the present invention provides a method for monitoring and managing a refrigeration system of a remote location. The method includes a communication network and a management center in communication with the remote location through the communication network. The management center receives information from the remote location regarding performance of the refrigeration system, whereby the management center analyzes and evaluates the information for altering operation of the refrigeration system thereby improving the performance.
The method of the present invention further provides several alarming routines for alerting a user of specific scenarios occurring at the remote location. A first set of alarms are directed toward food quality and safety concerns, alerting the management center and the remote location of potential issues with food quality and safety. A second set of alarms are directed toward components of the refrigeration system for alerting failure of particular components, as well as preventative maintenance requirements of particular components.